Ever wanted to direct your recipients to key content in your email campaign? This month, we’ll show you how easy it is to do this using anchor links in MessageFocus.

What are they?
Essentially an anchor link is a page mark in an HTML document that allows you to have a “˜table of contents’. They make it really easy for recipients to jump to the most important content in your email, or the items that interest them most.

How can I add them?
For this example, we’re going to use a template with three main sections. But the content is quite lengthy. So we’ll anchor link to the headers and make it super easy for recipients to quickly navigate their way through the email.

1. Dropping the Anchor

To insert the jump point (anchor), open the New HTML Editor and click your cursor next to the point you want it set, then click the “˜Insert/Edit Anchor’ button, which looks like a nautical anchor:

This will give you a box requesting an anchor name. Try to keep your naming style consistent and easy to remember. In this example, I’m going to call it “˜header1′ and click “˜Insert’.

You should notice another anchor symbol appear next to your page mark, this indicates that you’ve marked the jump point properly and are ready to direct people to it!

2. Linking the Anchor
Linking an anchor link is very similar to linking to a web page or email address.

Highlight the text you want to link and then click the “˜Insert/Edit Link’ button, which looks like a length of chain:

This shows a dialog box. Instead of a conventional URL, we’ll insert the name of our page mark prefaced with a hash. For this example, I input #header1 and click insert.

You’ll notice the highlighted text is linked, indicated by its blue font and underline. Now when you come to preview your campaign, you can click this link and be taken to that page mark!

Going Full Circle

Why not add an anchor link at the bottom of your email template? This can be useful when recipients need to jump back to the top of an email, especially if it’s long.